Implications of the C&SF Project — EATING THE EVERGLADES

        After the last several ETE posts I almost don’t know where to start. But it has to be with the incestuous relationship Congress has with the Corps of Engineers. The way our political system actually works, when large and wealthy landowners, developers, mining firms, and agri-businesses want something done to benefit their properties, they lean on their elected representatives, who had previously been primed to respond favorably after having received many thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Naturally, the pols are desperate to reward their moneyed supporters, so they turn to their pet agency, the Corps, which does whatever the politicians want. That is precisely how the system worked before in Florida and how it is working as you read the words on this page.

        The implications for the Everglades and all of south Florida should be obvious. If the goal of environmentally-oriented citizens is to create a new reality of effective stewardship and sustainability, those incestuous relationships between wealthy businessmen/landowners and bend-over politicians, and between the Congress and the Corps, have to be severed. That one sentence defines the extraordinary uphill struggle that lies ahead. A struggle the people of America are probably destined to lose, at least in my lifetime.

        We could learn a great deal about what is happening to Florida’s natural environments by looking through the lens crafted by the Girl Scouts-Boy Scouts: “Leave the camp as good as or better than you found it.” Which is really an offshoot of John Locke’s famous proviso, which he stated in many different ways but can be distilled to: Take what you need from nature and leave as much and as good for others. According to Locke, we have the right of acquisition only if we leave “enough and as good left in common” for others. From that point of view, we are failing miserably since our present actions are by every measure demonstrably worsening and declining natural resources for present and future generations. The evidence of that degradation is so overwhelming that not even many right-wingers would deny it. Well, there’s no telling what the tea party idiots believe so I should categorically exclude them as being incapable of offering rational inputs to a discussion about the environment.

        Human alteration of the previously natural landscape is what it all comes down to. Although a little dated, the Imaging the Region Report issued in 2001 by the Joint Center of Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University used a series of maps to document that alteration.[1] The maps show the amount of land that was in a natural state in 1953, 1973, and 1995. Almost 85 percent of south Florida (defined in the Imaging Report as Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties) was in a natural state in 1953. Agricultural uses accounted for about 75 percent of what was left and the rest was urbanized, which was less than four percent of the total land area. Allow me to repeat that number. Four percent in total land area. Not much, right? By 1973, development pressure had reduced the natural land category to about one fourth of its previous areal extent. In just 20 years. Although the majority of that alteration was a result of growth in agriculture uses, urban uses more than doubled to slightly less than ten percent of the total land area. Again, in just 20 years.

        Over the next 22 years the natural land category lost even more acreage but, owing to Federal and State protection, the loss was not substantial. However, all of the land that the Report had somewhat facetiously classified as “natural” had already been severely altered through human occupance and water management activities. So, take that previous statement about minimal loss of natural land with a huge train-car load of salt. However, the biggest change was that the growth of urban areas approximately doubled again. In 22 years. Doubled. 

        So, given the surging population pressure in south Florida, by 2025 what should we expect to have happened in terms of urban growth? Or by 2050? Fewer people living in less dense concentrations? I doubt it and so do all the experts, even those with the Corps. And for those who think everything changed with the housing bubble popping in south Florida, don’t get your hopes up. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, south Florida hasn't taken much of a detour in terms of adding population. So, that growth train is nearly back on track.

        Do any of you perceptive Readers believe that the highly competent Corps of Engineers has an official opinion of what all of the above means? Certainly they do. Just read on. “The result is a currently non-sustainable system of urban, agricultural, and natural environments in south Florida that exceeds the capacity of, or is hampered by, the existing system of water management.”[2]

        Exactly what do you think an organization like the Corps of Engineers would propose as the only solution to this horrendous mess of their own making? Why, what else but to construct more canals, more levees, and more pumping stations. In other words, they want to apply even more water management technology. See the next ETE post for the ugly details.

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[1] Allan Wallis and FAU/FIU Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems, Imaging the Region Report – South Florida via Indicators and Public Opinion, pp. 104-106; 2001.

[2] USACE, Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan — Final Feasibility Report and Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement; pp. 3-1 and 3-2, April 1999.